


Thus Thought Mephistopheles

by inspiration_assaulted



Category: Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
Genre: But I'm four centuries out of practice, Character Study, Gen, I tried to write in Elizabethan English, Internal Monologue, POV Nonhuman, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 01:33:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inspiration_assaulted/pseuds/inspiration_assaulted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Near the end of the twenty-four years, Faustus is nearly turned to repentance by an old man, while Mephistopheles watches. But what was the Minister of Hell thinking?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thus Thought Mephistopheles

Near four and twenty years he had served this man. Four and twenty years. Was that not time enough to make a man certain in his path? Were not two decades days, hours, seconds enough to be sure?

Had not he served well and true and faithfully enough? Wretched, wavering man! If he could not know himself, then such a man never deserved the bliss of Heaven; better for his soul to burn eternal beneath the celestial orbs. For such a time would Mephistopheles burn beside him.

Yet, do not the damned crave companionship? If four and twenty years of faithful partnership pleased Faustus, should not the endless days please him more? And still! He knows not his own heart. Confused, weak, faltering man!

Plague on Faustus, if he be swayed by the heated words of an old man. A pox on Earth, on soft, inconstant man! Tempted by what is dear and precious to kings and emperors, yet looking of the jaundice beneath their shirts, more yellow than the gold in greedy fingers clutched.

O, how yellow is man, to stake his eternal soul on mere trinkets! For gold? What is gold but base metal, born of the earth. Nay, there is gold enough in Hell to sate the greatest ruler, to deck and trim the widest bosom of a king.

And if he sell his soul for love? Or what man call love, which is that desire that draws the eye down the neck of a maiden to rest below her shoulders and stirs a man to a soldier’s stance beneath his shirttails. How many a man hath said that his love had stolen his soul! Loves he not, but Lust doth find him, and wherein resides Lust but in the sulphurous pits?

And yet.

And yet would man, would Faustus, forego his soul for famed beauty. For naught but the conjured image of Helen would Faustus spit upon the pleasures forbidden to Mephistopheles. He would call the Minister of Hell ‘good servant’ without passing thought, but weep at the price of such words? Faustus speaks of ‘dear’ and ‘sweet,’ and swears he will strike down the pious! What knows Faustus of dear?

Wherefore, but Mephistopheles should teach him?

When Faustus is Mephistopheles’s companion upon the tortured flames, then shall he know of ‘dear.’ Once past the scholar has the endless day to his contemplations; let Faustus think on ‘dear’ then, and discover that what was once dear to him became too dear for him.

O man, that bends like supple wheat yields in the wind, bending with the slightest force: first bowing one way, next the other, even as the wind changes. Faustus, thou is deserving of Hell if thou cannot stand straight after four and twenty years, for even a scholar could not contemplate so long on a single subject.

So take thy trinkets, Faustus, and take thy conjured woman, and take thy pleasures of them, if they set your mind at last. Mephistopheles will keep to his task, to keep thy grain stalk mind bent toward his Master, and Faustus will be damned.


End file.
